A lot of people think we didn't land on the moon, and that the Earth is flat.
Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
141–150 of 198 posts
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#142I'm skeptical that most respondents understood the questions correctly. Most people are familiar with income tax, because they know that money is removed from their paycheck every month. Many also file tax returns. A wealth tax, where a fraction of your bank balance is removed every month, is a totally alien concept to most people. If you haven't thought about it before, it can take a minute or two to wrap your head…
I don’t mind a tax on my bank balance over $32,000,000 for example. I would need multiple lifetimes to spend so much money. Most of my money comes to me from real estate ownership and investments. I do not exchange time and life force for it. My bank account just grows. It is ok some of it to pay taxes to make the lives of the less fortunate a bit less unbearable. After all I take 25-35% of their incomes in rent :) (…
I agree with you in principle on this particular example, but where is the cutoff, and how often will it move? Will it move accurately, or will inflation be used to sneak it downward?
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#143this is a classic case of tyranny of the majority. Majority of Americans favor stealing wealth from others.
Do you see existing yearly property and car taxes as theft? In general, where does one draw the line between theft and taxes?
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#144Alternative title: Majority of Americans are not rich, and therefore see no downside to taking from those who are I do think the inequality gap is becoming more of a problem, but simply asking the population if they want someone else to pay more is going to have the obvious result.
That's pretty reductionist - it seems to me like we have many non-rich Americans who possess varying strengths of the belief that, generally, the rich rightfully earned all they've come to and in turn provide more or less proportional value to society, and that opinion informs their opinion on wealth taxes. As well, the implication that not-havers broadly can not be relied upon to express holistic or worthy opinions…
Nobody made the general statement that not-havers can’t be relied upon to express worthy opinions regarding society’s rules.
In this specific case, the only thing that I might call ridiculous would be expecting that populations will not choose to act in accordance with what is in their individual best interest. It’s pretty rare, at least in western societies, for people to knowingly make choices that hurt themselves as individuals in order to benefit society as a whole.
Ultra wealthy people will always be the minority by definition. Nobody is going to complain if Bezos, Gates, and Buffet has to pay more. Even if a handful of the population disagree on principle, they are too busy with their own challenges in life to mount a fight on behalf of deca-billionaires.
So I think this survey is about as meaningful as asking every employee if they think they should get a raise if it means that their CEO has to take a pay cut. You’d be dumb not to, unless you’re the CEO, or you think you may become the CEO.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#145I'm skeptical that most respondents understood the questions correctly. Most people are familiar with income tax, because they know that money is removed from their paycheck every month. Many also file tax returns. A wealth tax, where a fraction of your bank balance is removed every month, is a totally alien concept to most people. If you haven't thought about it before, it can take a minute or two to wrap your head…
The wording used in the survey is included in the article. > “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs” They included "extra share" and "total wealth". I think that's quite clear and 64% strongly or somewhat agreed with that statement. > “the very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality” 54% of respon…
I agree with you that the authors probably tried to make this clear. My suspicion is based less on "sneaky pollsters" or "stupid people" as some comments suggest, and more on my observation that people tend to rush through surveys. When you're rushing, I think it would be easy to make a mistake like this.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A wealth tax, where a fraction of your bank balance is removed every month, is a totally alien concept to most people. If you haven't thought about it before, it can take a minute or two to wrap your head around what it would actually mean. Many Americans already experience a form of wealth tax: property tax. You are taxed a percentage of the value of your property, something not terribly liquid. Incidentally, a ha…
1. Many people rent, and have never seen a property tax bill, despite paying it indirectly via their landlord. 2. It's not the same thing. You can choose how extravagant a house to live in relative to your total wealth and your income to make sure that you can cover the property tax bill while still meeting your saving goals. An "everything else" wealth tax, (by definition) doesn't allow you to do that. Your control…
> 2. It's not the same thing. You can choose how extravagant a house to live in relative to your total wealth and your income to make sure that you can cover the property tax bill while still meeting your saving goals.
This isn't really true. Yes, I can control the value of my home at a single point in time but if my neighborhood gentrifies, even if I make no improvements to my home, my taxes will go up. You can technically plead your case to the tax assessor and argue that because your bathrooms and kitchens are "obsolete" you technically shouldn't be valued as high as your neighbors but your taxes are going up regardless.
I understand that in California there are rules around how often they can raise your property taxes, but for nearly everyone else if your home value goes up so will your taxes.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A wealth tax, where a fraction of your bank balance is removed every month, is a totally alien concept to most people. If you haven't thought about it before, it can take a minute or two to wrap your head around what it would actually mean. Many Americans already experience a form of wealth tax: property tax. You are taxed a percentage of the value of your property, something not terribly liquid. Incidentally, a ha…
There is a good reason property tax isn't quite like a wealth tax: property tax is used to pay for services provided by the municipality (schools, libraries, roads). More similar to the wealth tax would be the so-called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax that does make the rich pay for "hoarding" land as a commodity, without creating the the disincentive to improve the land (which is a side effect of proper…
>property tax is used to pay for services provided by the municipality (schools, libraries, roads).
Would not a wealth tax also pay for services that provided to that wealth? For example, especially at the billionaire level, there is an entire national defense and internal legal system that prevents others from seizing the wealth for themselves.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#148Alternative title: Majority of Americans are not rich, and therefore see no downside to taking from those who are I do think the inequality gap is becoming more of a problem, but simply asking the population if they want someone else to pay more is going to have the obvious result.
No, the majority of Americans believe that everyone should live a decent life rather than a few random people living stupid wealthy lives while others suffer in poverty. I do agree that the sentiment is pretty deeply ingrained in American culture though, for a long time people have voted and advocated against their own interests because one day they might win the lottery and somehow make it through the insane taxes t…
This doesn’t address my point. The majority of Americans are not wealthy, so of course the majority thinks that.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#149Just tax capital gains as income if you want to hit the rich. Wealth taxes are both harder to implement and enforce than income taxes (e.g. how do you appraise an illiquid asset) while conferring no meaningful advantages.
Wealth taxes became a big part of American political discourse because your populist politicians realised they can promise voters astoundingly expensive things by framing them as being just a small percentage of the wealth of ultra-wealthy folks like Jeff Bezos. You can't pull off that rhetorical trick by taxing capital gains.
Of course, in reality I don't think this would work anyway. All that wealth only exists on paper - it's just the nominal values of their shareholdings at the current market price, and if you make everyone sell at once that price plummets and the illusion disappears. I'm not sure it even makes sense on a fundamental economic level. You can't turn shares in Amazon into healthcare in the way that you could, say, Bezos buying a less fancy yacht. Even though the yacht and the healthcare use different resources, other businesses in the economy with a choice between what resources they use to make their products receive pricing pressure to change that choice and ultimately, it should all sort itself out in the end. That doesn't work here. The only way for the sums to work out is for other people who would actually buy things to forgoe purchases worth as much as whatever you want to fund and buy Amazon shares with them instead - and the whole reason populist politicians want to frame this in terms of wealth in the first place is because what they want to fund is huge compared to the size of the US economy.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a mystery at all. But that does not address the wealth inequality. It just provides bare necessities to the poor (which is a great thing, it's just not what I was talking about).
Taking money from the top of the wealth gap and putting at the bottom seems like it should reduce the gap by simple mathematics.
I just don't feel that is the case. Because money given to a poor person will likely be spent on essentials, not saved. The wealth tax will likely be less than what a wealthy person makes in capital gains/dividends each year so meanwhile their fortunes are growing. So while it definitely helps the poor, it's not going to tighten that gap.
Something more fundamental needs to be done with corporations and how disproportional the rewards are to the owners/shareholders and the employees themselves. I have no idea what this would actually look like though.